Monday, 21 November 2016

Simon Lewis has been a human and a vampire, and now he is becoming a Shadowhunter. But the events of City of Heavenly Fire
left him stripped of his memories, and Simon isn’t sure who he is
anymore. He knows he was friends with Clary, and that he convinced the
total goddess Isabelle Lightwood to go out with him…but he doesn’t know
how. And when Clary and Isabelle look at him, expecting him to be a man
he doesn’t remember…Simon can’t take it.

So when the Shadowhunter
Academy reopens, Simon throws himself into this new world of
demon-hunting, determined to find himself again. His new self. Whomever
this new Simon might be.

But the Academy is a Shadowhunter
institution, which means it has some problems. Like the fact that
non-Shadowhunter students have to live in the basement. And that
differences—like being a former vampire—are greatly looked down upon. At
least Simon is trained in weaponry—even if it’s only from hours of
playing D&D.

Join Simon on his journey to become a
Shadowhunter, and learn about the Academy’s illustrious history along
the way, through guest lecturers such as Jace Herondale, Tessa Gray, and
Magnus Bane. These ten short stories give an epilogue to the Mortal
Instruments series and provide glimpses of what’s in store in the Dark
Artifices.

My Thoughts:
It's no secret that I completely ADORE
anything to do with the Shadowhunter world created by Cassandra
Clare, so needless to say I was very excited to find out there would
be a series of short stories about Simon Lewis from The Mortal
Instruments! Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy follows Simon's next
two years after the events at the end of City of Heavenly Fire. He's
at the newly reopened academy, training to become a Shadowhunter.
Whilst there he meets his room-mate George Lovelace, and the two of
them quickly become friends.

The book consists of ten short stories
written by Cassie herself and her fellow writers Sarah Rees Brennan,
Maureen Johnson, and Robin Wasserman. Whilst following Simon's
journey, we also get plenty of updates on the other main characters
from TMI, along with a few stories set back in time with the
characters from The Infernal Devices. This variety in the stories
kept me gripped. One of my personal favourites was Nothing But
Shadows, that gave us a chance to get to know the characters in
Cassie's future series The Last Hours. I'll admit that I wasn't
overly interested about this series for a while, mostly because there
are a lot of Shadowhunter stories (A LOT) and I didn't want to get
invested in one series whilst currently reading another (TDA. Like I
said, A LOT TO KEEP UP WITH). But this story completely pulled me in.
I fell in love with the characters and now I REALLY WANT TO READ THE
LAST HOURS AND GOD ONLY KNOWS WHEN IT'LL BE RELEASED. I loved being
able to jump from Simon and his friends in the modern day academy,
back to the academy in 1899 where we meet James Herondale and Matthew
Fairchild.

Whilst the book goes off on tangents to
tell us a collection of short stories, the journey of Simon and his
friends is constant throughout. With The Bane Chronicles (Cassie's
previous collection of short stories) it was possible to jump in and
out of the book at any story, but with this one it's better to read
all of the stories in order. It also gives a better insight into some
of the characters and situations we read about in the main
Shadowhunter books. For example, there is a story called Bitter of
Tongue that focuses on Mark Blackthorn from The Dark Artifices. My
absolute favourite story had to be Born To Endless Night, which
focused a little more on all of the TMI characters, specifically
Magnus Bane and Alec Lightwood. It had me laughing one minute and
then an emotional mess the other.

So the final story in this book
COMPLETELY TORE MY HEART OUT AND I'M NOT OKAY. I will mention that I
did already know the Major Event at the end. These stories were
released originally as eBooks on a monthly basis, but I knew they'd
be released in physical copy at a later date, so I decided to wait
until then to read them. Mostly because I like having physical copies
and also I was way too broke to buy one every month. I had no idea
that the short story at the end of Lady Midnight would contain a
spoiler for this book, but...it did. A very huge spoiler. So that
unfortunately meant I went through this whole book knowing the fate
of a main character, and whilst I wish I hadn't known it beforehand
because it would have packed more of an emotional punch, I still
found the ending powerful.

All of the stories within this book
were great to read and I enjoyed not only catching up with some old
favourite characters, but also meeting some amazing new ones. I loved
getting the chance to jump back into the Shadowhunter world again!

Monday, 14 November 2016

Henry Page has never
been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo,
heart palpitating, can't-eat-can't-sleep kind of love that he's been
hoping for just hasn't been in the cards for him - at least not yet.

Instead,
he's been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into a semi-decent
college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace
Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior
year and he knows everything's about to change.

Grace
isn't who Henry pictured as his dream girl; she walks with a cane, wears
oversized boys' clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when Grace and
Henry are both chosen to edit the school paper, he quickly finds
himself falling for her. It's obvious there's something broken about
Grace, but it seems to make her even more beautiful to Henry, and he
wants nothing more than to help her put the pieces back together again.
And yet, this isn't your average story of boy meets girl.

My Thoughts:

Our Chemical Hearts was the October
read for those of us at The Book Club! There may be a few itty bitty
things that are spoilery in this review, so if you don't want to know
anything plot-wise, then it might be wise to avoid scrolling down!

This story follows Henry Page from the
moment that new girl, Grace Town, arrives at his school. When the two
of them end up working together on the school paper, he finds himself
fascinated by her and her mysterious past. When he finds out that the
place Grace has been disappearing to each day is the cemetery, he
discovers that she is grieving the death of her childhood best friend
and boyfriend.

I'll be honest, I went into this book
wary. The mixed reactions from fellow bloggers whose opinions I often
agree with left me wondering if this was the type of book I'd enjoy,
but I pushed the varied reviews aside when I started reading it so
that I could judge it for myself. Unfortunately, I was right to be
apprehensive because this book definitely wasn't for me.

My main issue with this story was the
lead character, Henry. His dialogue and inner thoughts didn't connect
with me at all, and I found some moments a little inappropriate.
Obviously grief is a strong theme within this book, but to me it
wasn't handled very well. Whenever there were genuine shows of raw
emotion from Grace, Henry would think or say something ridiculous
that took that emotion away from the moment. One instance of this is
when he decides to be open with Grace about his feelings for her, and
discovers for the first time that her boyfriend died. Because he's
put his foot in his mouth, whilst she's talking to him all he thinks
is about researching methods of suicide to get himself out of the
embarrassing situation. I'm assuming comments like that one were
supposed to be read as witty, another quirky part of Henry's
personality, but it just made me uncomfortable. The tongue-in-cheek
attitude didn't work for me. It felt like throughout the whole story,
he was trying to make the situation about him. Yes, Grace used him as
a rebound, and no that wasn't an okay thing to do, but Henry was
equally as guilty of acting like a fool.

Aside from Henry, the characters in
general just didn't work for me. The only character who I was
interested in knowing more about was Henry's best friend, Lola Leung,
but even with her I had problems. She is described as the 'diversity
triple threat' because she's a lesbian and a POC. On one hand, yay
for some diversity, on the other hand, throwing it all into one
character and then making a quirky joke about it felt like cheating.
It felt to me that Lola, like a lot of the characters in this book,
existed more to tick boxes than to actually add to the story.

The plot itself, whilst trying to be
relatable and have a unique edge, felt more 'been there, done that'.
I didn't find anything in these characters or this plot to set it
apart from other stories by similar authors. The dealing of grief in
this book also let me down. Grief and the effect it has on people is
something that can be written about beautifully in YA (see for
example: The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson), but I feel as though
any real heartfelt emotion was overshadowed.

What I will say is that there were some
aspects of the ending that I really enjoyed because it was honest and
believable, but by that point I'd already had enough of the book. I'm
sure there are plenty of people who would adore this story. For one,
our book club was completely split on it, with some of us loving it
and a few of us disliking it, so it made for a great discussion. It
just wasn't right for me at the moment. This is a book that I
probably would have lapped up a few years ago (back when I wanted to
devour anything John Green related), but now I'm tired of characters
like Henry Page.

An adored celebrity has been killed. Sixteen-year-old Martha Honeydew was found holding a gun, standing over the body.

Now Justice must prevail.

The general public will decide whether Martha is innocent or guilty by viewing daily episodes of the hugely popular TV show Death is Justice, the only TV show that gives the power of life and death decisions - all for the price of a phone call.

Martha
has admitted to the crime. But is she guilty? Or is reality sometimes
more complicated than the images we are shown on TV?

My Thoughts:
This was read along with my fellow members of The Book Club for our September read!

Cell 7 is set in a twisted dystopian future in which justice is supposedly placed into the hands of the public. When a person commits a crime, they are placed in Cell 1. Over the course of the following seven days, the public tune in to watch the popular show 'Death Is Justice' to follow the progress of the prisoner, learn their story, hear from experts and people involved, before then deciding whether or not that person is guilty. Our protagonist, Martha, was caught with a gun and a dead body at her feet. The body of the most well-known and well-loved celebrity, Jackson Paige. Whilst Martha moves through her seven different cells, we learn that not everything is as it seems with her story.

Firstly, let me start by saying that I love the concept of this story. The twisted justice system and the lies and deceit within it was fascinating, and it really made me wonder about they way society currently works and whether something like this could ever legitimately happen in our future. The questions is raises and the social commentary were all valid and interesting, and it was this side of the story I loved the most. Another point that I'm glad was raised was that only those who could afford to vote would be able to because the voting system wasn't free. Despite the fact that this system was placed in order to serve justice, it doesn't actually give normal people the power because it's entirely corrupted by money.

Whilst there were parts of this story that I found interesting and gripping, the plot didn't feel as original as I wanted it to. That might just be because over the past several years, I have read a lot of dystopian novels (and I mean A LOT), and maybe I'm starting to grow a little tired of them. My other problem was that I was easily able to predict all of the plot twists way before they were actually revealed, so when they finally were confirmed, it didn't have much of an impact. The predictability of the plot took away from the enjoyment of the story for me. I like to be surprised and tricked, but these twists and turns were a little too obvious.

I also found it difficult to connect with the characters. This book is told in several different ways. We follow Martha in her cell as she addresses someone she is thinking about on the outside. We follow her counsellor, Eve, and we also have chapters that are written as scripts for the Death Is Justice show. I wanted to root for Martha and to enjoy her chapters most, but the character I preferred to follow was actually Eve. I felt like I didn't get much of a chance to learn about the real Martha beyond her tough childhood on the Rises, the poorer community who live in high-rise flats built to help the housing crisis, and the love story that she was part of. The romance was another area that didn't pull me in as much as I wanted to. Whatever chemistry these characters had, I couldn't feel it.

Throughout the book, whilst we learn a bit about the history of the system, we don't actually discover the process that happened for this system to be put in place. It left me with questions as to how the society in this story reacted at first, and how people came to accept it. But since this is obviously the first in a series, I'm assuming there will be more time to answer those questions in the future.